UGA Bulldog fans have shed a lot of tears this fall as the team struggles to reach mediocrity. Anything other than “terrible” looks darn good right now.

Last weekend’s loss to Florida, while not unexpected, still stung the Dawg faithful. Those of a certain age can still hear Larry Munson from the 1980 Georgia-Florida game screaming, “Lindsay Scott! Lindsay Scott!”

Those were the glory days. Herschel Walker. National championship. You could even watch the game at home from the “tracks.”

Today, one of Herschel’s multiple personalities hawks sandwiches on TV; the stadium has long been enclosed and the tracks rendered both mute and moot; and the Dawgs are about as far away from a national championship as a team can get.

To say UGA fans are restless would be a vast understatement. A quick peek at some of the Dawg blogs show a seething air of discontent: Toss Mark Richt, pull Joe Cox.
As a general rule, I don’t follow this stuff closely. Win, lose, draw, life goes on. In the grand scheme of things, there are a lot more important problems to worry about other than the outcome of a ballgame. Coaches and players come and go — in 10 years, whose names will we remember from 2009?

But there’s something different about what’s happening with the current UGA team and it isn’t very pretty. The high number of penalties, the personal fouls, the face mask, the late hits all make UGA look like a team of hoodlums.

Playing with emotion is one thing. Even the gimmicks of the last few years with black jerseys and black helmets can serve as symbolic motivation.

But it’s gone too far. The image has changed. UGA players now obviously seek a “bad-boy” image by the way they play and act on the field. If the late hits aren’t enough, the chest-beating and prancing around after every play are ludicrous.

It’s embarrassing. Either Coach Richt has recruited a bunch of thugs to play for UGA, or he’s allowing half the team to act like it.

Maybe if the team were winning more, they could get away with a little bad-boy acting. But when you act big, but perform small, you just look like idiots.
And that’s not good. It costs penalties. It costs games. But mostly it costs respect.

It’s bad enough to lose. Worse — losing and being bad sports in the process.

That’s not UGA’s tradition, at least not in my lifetime. While the image of the SEC as being filled with genteel Southern colleges may be mostly myth, it’s also got a grain of truth. If you lose, you can at least carry yourself with a measure of dignity.

Nowadays, most major college games are carried on one of the many sports networks available by cable or satellite. There are few games seen just by those who show up to sit in the stands.

So across the country, UGA games are seen by millions of people, many of whom have never been closer to Athens GA than the Atlanta airport.

Their image of UGA — the entire state, even — is mostly based on how that one football team acts for four hours on Saturday afternoons in the fall.

Ask around. How many people this fall can say they’re proud of how the state’s flagship university has been represented by its football program?

Me neither.

Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.

Well said. Coach Richt started out as what seemed to be a good man. I don't know him, and he may still be a good man. However, I've seen a change in him on the sidelines over the past few years. It seems as if the fame and glory of being a coach at a school like UGA has gone to his head. Maybe too many young cheerleaders showered him with attention (remember what stopped Vince Dooley's Gov campaign?).

Whatever it is too many of the Dawgs end up in trouble – on and off the field. The end zone display, in my opinion, a few years back against Florida was the start of the downfall. All that talent, all that promise of last year’s team that ended as a joke, should have been a wakeup call. Instead, it was more like a funeral.

Gone are the dreams; gone are the cheers. What’s left is a bunch of thugs in “cool” black uniforms led by a man who has become more of a peer than a leader. College kids need leaders – they have plenty of peers.

The team, has been penalty prone for a while, Richt is an excellent coach toughing it out after losing three offensive stars, you're not going to find a better coach. Bulldog fans live in some sort of fantasy world. The SEC is traditionally the toughest division in college football. Three of your losses are to top 10 teams. Get a grip Bulldog nation.

Chalk this up to a rebuilding year. I agree that excessive penalties seem to be a result of a lack of discipline on a team. Personally, I am not quite ready to label them as gangsters but they do need to start acting more responsibly both on and off the field.

Not only was Richt a coach for Bowden at FSU, but he spent his college career at the University of Miami at a time when they were at the height of thuggery. Richt is a nice guy but will forgive thugs too easy. He tries the approach of being the players friend. I like what coach Johnson at Georgia Tech says "I'm 50 years old, I have friends the players have their friends. I'm paid to be their coach not their friend."

Didn't realize he was at U of Miami - that speaks volumes to the problem. I think it's time for him to go.

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